Navalny’s wardens permitted him to keep some notebooks, and he began to document, in meticulous detail, life behind bars ... Navalny’s indefatigable goodness is all the more poignant.
Honest, full of penetrating wit and with a nice ear for mockery, he was nonetheless as cheerful and empathetic as Putin is malevolent and threatening. He wielded cheerfulness as a weapon and never lost faith that the right side must eventually prevail, even if he might no longer be around to see it.
The chance to hear his own written voice, to spend serious time with him (nearly 500 pages), only reinforces this impression, along with the pain of having lost him ... Who else but someone with such reserves of fortitude, with such a sense of self, with such an ability to laugh but also believe, would be able to withstand such indignity, such mental torture? He allowed himself, his actual body, to represent another kind of Russia, a freer country. And he did so knowing that he might never actually ever see it with his own eyes.
